Tag: History

The Abbott government cut 117 mill from the Indigenous affairs budget. The NT conservative government redirected fund out and away from The budget allocated for Aboriginal affairs. The media run aggreesive campaigns claiming the dysfunction in Aboriginal communities is of their own making. Andrew Bolt insists Aboriginal Culture is to blame. Completely counter to the findings here (ODT)

In four of the cases, the person who killed themselves had done so not long after a relative had also killed themselves.

Fogliani said that trauma, grief and premature death are experienced at “disturbingly high rates” in Aboriginal communities, and there was a growing preparedness in government and the community to accept that “colonisation had severe and deleterious impacts upon this ancient and traditional culture”.

The coroner handed down 42 recommendations relating to alcohol restrictions for the Kimberley; programs for diagnosing, treating and educating on foetal alcohol spectrum disorder; better mental health and suicide prevention programs and facilites; and ensuring that the Indigenous population is consulted in the development of programs, and brought in to help enact them.

She made those recommendations due to a consistent theme of the inquest that Indigenous people often felt that these decisions were made for them, rather than with them.

Fogliani also said that better mental health services and suicide prevention strategies could have saved the 13.

“The deaths of the 13 children and young persons the subject of this Inquest were all preventable.”

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The hell visited on Syrian society has been in many respects a continuation of the hell visited on Iraq in 2003, after 13 years of sanctions had already killed two million of its people, including half a million children.

During this sanctions period, former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright, in a rare moment of candor for a functionary of the empire, provided us with an invaluable insight into the pristine barbarism which lurks behind the mask of democracy and human rights that such people usually wear for the purposes of confusing the public mind as to who and what they truly are.

The interviewer, Lesley Stahl, put it to Albright that half a million Iraqi children had died due to the sanctions, and asked if she thought the price “is worth it.” Albright without hesitation answered Yes. “We think the price is worth it.”

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On May 14, 1948, Israel declared its independence. Each May 15, Palestinians solemnly commemorate Nakba Day. Nakba means catastrophe, and that’s precisely what Israel’s independence has been for the more than 700,000 Arabs and their five million refugee descendants forced from their homes and into exile, often by horrific violence, to make way for the Jewish state.

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Supporters of Israel among Britain’s ruling elite tend to recite mantras about the two nations sharing the same values.

If theft and plunder were regarded as values, the mantras would have a ring of truth to them.

Expecting full honesty and transparency from Theresa May’s government would, however, not be realistic. So it comes as little surprise that one of her cabinet colleagues has wished Israel a happy 70th birthday, while trumpeting its commitment to “justice, compassion, tolerance.”

The greeting – from Gavin Williamson, Britain’s defense secretary – was delivered at a time when unarmed protesters were being massacred in Gaza.

Britain’s ruling elites have never atoned for their role in enabling the 1948 dispossession of Palestinians. Rather, they have prolonged and exacerbated the suffering of Palestinians, while pretending to believe in justice.

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“Cannabis has hit the headlines recently due to legalisation in many States across the US, however, prior to the legalisation, it was only illegal for a few short decades and was prescribed in many western countries up until the 1970s.” That triggered a huge Global Criminal Industry bigger than Prohibition. ( OD )

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January 26, 1788, the day the British Empire jacked an entire continent; the day that marks the beginning of a 230-year reign of terror on the Indigenous peoples of this land we call Australia, which continues to this day.

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Like most of Trump’s pronouncements, this was boilerplate projection. If anything is full of lies, it is the president himself. As The Washington Post documented back in November, Trump had made 1,628 “false or misleading claims” in less than 300 days in office ― for an astonishing average of 5.5 false statements a day. That pace has not abated.

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“We have to be their check on power,” declares Post editor Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks), as he argues the case for printing the story with publisher Katharine Graham (Meryl Streep) while she wrestles with the possibility of losing her business and winding up in prison in the process. “We have to hold them accountable. If we don’t, who will?”

“In the absence of the governmental checks and balances present in other areas of our national life, the only effective restraint upon executive policy and power in the areas of national defence and international affairs may lie in an enlightened citizenry – in an informed and critical public opinion which alone can here protect the values of democratic government,” he wrote. “For this reason, it is perhaps here that a press that is alert, aware, and free most vitally serves the basic purpose of the first amendment. For, without an informed and free press, there cannot be an enlightened people.”

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Jere Van Dyk has reported on Afghanistan since the 1970s and has written extensively about the nation’s evolution from a hippie haven to a battleground for the war on terror. His most recent book is The Trade: My Journey into the Labyrinth of Political Kidnapping, which details his search for answers after being kidnapped by the Taliban in 2008. Van Dyk talks about his years in a surprisingly progressive Afghanistan in the early 1970s and the United States’ funding of the mujahideen in the 1970s and 1980s with the hopes of turning Afghanistan into the Soviet Union’s Vietnam. He also discusses harrowing experience of being held captive by the Taliban and explains why he returned to the country years later in spite of great personal risk.

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Lord Balfour, for one, sharply rejected the Wilsonian approach. “In Palestine,” he declared, “we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country, though the American commission has. [. . .] Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is…of far profounder import than the desire and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land.”

In the end, Lord Balfour had his way. Instead of independence, boundaries were drawn, dismembering the Arab East and creating British and French spheres of influence over the newly created states of Lebanon and Syria (France) and trans-Jordan and Iraq (Britain) as well as Palestine (also to the British, with the understanding that it would become the “Jewish Homeland”).

And so, the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration is not cause for celebration. Rather it should prompt us to recall the grave injustice that imperial acquisitiveness and racist insensitivity have done to an innocent Arab nation. Their rights and opinions were ignored and as a result the last 100 years have been marked by unceasing conflict and suffering. This is the shame of Balfour.

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Stephen Keim discusses Kevin Donnelly’s use of a discredited IPA study as a benchmark for university education content and the advancement of the Right’s long march into privilege, tyranny and ‘universal truth’.WHEN an opinion piece, starts by citing an Institute of Public Affairs’ (IPA) “forensic analysis of how history is now taught in our universities”, it is probably a good signal that I should read no further.

The dismissal of the Whitlam government and the Queen’s embargo of her correspondence with the governor general about it remind us of the lingering power of the “colonial relics”. While the palace letters remain closed to us, at the behest of the Queen, we can never know the full story of the dismissal of the Whitlam government.

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Since 1967, the Israeli media has hid the ugly, everyday reality in the occupied territories. But even if they really knew, would Israelis still choose to end 50 years of military rule over the Palestinians? By Yizhar Be’er According to the democratic-liberal-utopian model, let us assume for a moment that every citizens has access to all the information about the reality that surrounds us. In this world, Israelis would know everything about what is being done in their names in the territories occupied in 1967. And what would happen then? [tmwinpost] Over the past few months I have been producing a radiophonic project…

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If you’re going to lie, make it a big one. And nowhere are they bigger than from the mouths of our leaders, writes Richard Hil. It’s not unusual for the powerful to distort, manipulate and deceive. Orwellian doublespeak, spin and obfuscation have become the everyday stuff of power elites. It’s been like this for aMore

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He may be the subject of worship from London’s Parliament Square to the Oval Office in Washington DC, but Winston Churchill was little more than a mass murderer, with as much blood on his hands as Hitler does. That’s according to the Indian politician and author Shashi Tharoor, whose new book ‘Inglorious Empire’ chronicles the …

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Some 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from their homes in the 1948 war that led to Israel’s establishment. One organization is taking Israelis to visit the ruins of the abandoned villages, to learn about the Palestinian ‘Nakba,’ or tragedy. Read more about Nakba remembrance: Turning entire Palestinian villages invisible How we learned to forget the villages we destroyed For Israelis, Palestinian refugees are a constant, lurking threat

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In 1838 white settlers murdered 28 Aboriginal men, women and children near Myall Creek Station. For the first time in history some killers were tried and hanged.The massacre is a harrowing reminder of Australia’s colonial violence.

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Despite years of Jewish education, much of which focused on Israel, this young American Zionist was still ignorant of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank. By David Sarna Galdi The Israeli occupation of the West…

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Before the advent of Zionism and Arab nationalism, Jews and Palestinians lived in peace in the holy land. Menachem Klein’s new book maps out an oft-forgotten history of Israel/Palestine, and offers some guidance on how…

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OPINION: The party of safe economic hands? Not so much. It’s time to blow this hard-to-kill myth out of the water, writes Costa Avgoustinos. 1) Bad Social Values Mean Bad Economic Decisions Like everyone, the Liberals’ economic decisions are tied to their social values. And they make bad economic decisions because of that. They seeMore

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Another skirmish in the history wars. A guide – not a directive – to the University of New South Wales Diversity Toolkit has said that Australia was not settled peacefully, it was invaded, occupied and colonized.

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It’s been more than 50 years since Allen Dulles resigned as director of the CIA, but his legacy lives on. Between 1953 and 1961, under his watch, the CIA overthrew the governments of Iran and Guatemala, invaded Cuba, and was tied to the killing of Patrice Lumumba, Congo’s first democratically elected leader. We speak with David Talbot, author of “The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government,” about how Dulles’ time at the CIA helped shape the current national security state.

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Part 2 of our interview with David Talbot, author of “The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government,” about how Dulles’ time at the CIA helped shape the current national security state.

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80s business tycoon Alan Bond has paid a billion dollars for a small patch of Heaven that Kerry Packer first bought for $80 five years ago.

Mr Bond, who was desperate to make his mark in the afterlife, said Packer was not willing to budge from his initial price of $1 billion. “So I made a few phone calls and managed to put together enough for the asking price. It’s a stunning little plot of land,” Mr Bond said.

Before the purchase, the land was independently valued at $180.

Mr Packer said he was pleased with the transaction. “You only get one Alan Bond per afterlife, and I’ve had mine”.